Reference Books
These are just a few examples of what awaits in the E's, F's, G's and HM-HQ areas of the Reference stacks (1st floor, Ellis, near the mini-computer lab and across from the north elevators):

General Anthropology Reference
Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology - strong on the current state of theory about anthropology, rather than ethnographic examples
Handbook of Ethnography - essays on theoretical "schools" and movements, but also topics like ethics, use of photographs, the ethnographic interview.

Encyclopedic Works on Groups, Large and Small
Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World(4 vols.) - has short to multipage articles on groups of people, and on concepts such as "alienation" and "age stratification." 
Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life, vol. 2, The Americas.--organized by national group; includes South and Central American nationalities , various hyphenated-Americans, Native American tribes
The Family in America: An Encyclopedia (2 vols.)
Gay Histories and Cultures (2 vols. - another volume for lesbian history and culture)
Encyclopedia of Modern American Extremists
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (5 volumes)
Asian American Encyclopedia (6 volumes)
American Immigrant Cultures (2 volumes)
Hispanic-American Almanac
Also, look among the marketing books for neon green volumes about generations of Americans from a statistical perspective, includingThe Baby Boom; The Millennials; Older Americans: A Changing Market.

Folklore
Encyclopedia of Taboos
Encyclopedia of Urban Legends
...and also books on the folklore of various groups, including African Americans in the South, Chicanos, South Asians.

Regional
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
Encyclopedia of the Midwest
Encyclopedia of Missouri (2 volumes) - This work is mostly historical, but its bibliography may be useful.

Reference Websites

Social Science Information Gateway: Ethnographic Studies of Peoples and Communities, http://www.sosig.ac.uk/roads/subject-listing/World-cat/ethnostud.html  A well organized annotated webliography of ethnographic data available online, articles, bibliographies, projects, you name it.   

Anthrobase, http://www.anthrobase.com/ Full text of anthropological papers, talks, field notes, articles, etc. from around the world (many European authors). You can search the database or browse it by topic.

Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life, http://ceel.psc.isr.umich.edu/.  Besides being an interesting organization, the Center also has a good list of links to various ethnographic projects that can serve as examples for you.

Other MU Libraries Sourcepacks:

Finding books

MERLIN is the name of MU's library catalog.  MERLIN can be "expanded" to include the other campuses of UM and St. Louis University, and MU students, faculty and staff can have books sent here from those places.  When doing keyword searches, remember that you can use a truncation symbol (*) to find variants of words, you can combine search words, and you can limit and sort your results in several ways.

When searching for books about particular people or places or named events or movements, start with a subject search.

When searching for books on a topic or a combination of topics, start with a keyword search. Keyword searches will cover the title, author, subject headings and for some books, even the table of contents.

MOBIUS is the larger group of libraries that includes nearly every college and university library in Missouri.  You may have books you find in a MOBIUS search sent to the Ellis Library Circulation Desk for pickup.

Sociological Abstracts  MU users only This subject-specific database shows you the sociological and some anthropological scholarly work on a topic.  The truncation character is * (example: ethnograph* to find ethnography, ethnographic, etc.).  There are very few full-text articles in this database, but see Find it @ MU below for information on finding out if we have full-text access elsewhere.

Lexis Nexis Academic  MU users onlyThis full-text news database is a good place to find news articles on your topic.  The truncation character is !.